When Sony signed Ashley Henry for his debut album Beautiful Vinyl Hunter (2020), it symbolised music industry recognition of UK jazz’s burgeoning potential. Henry’s stellar status remains, but his second album is released on his own label, Royal Raw, and confirms his place somewhat to the side of his grime-influenced London peers. Right from his initial EP, Easter, he seemed to draw on the utopian black British R&B vision defined by Soul II Soul as much as piano heroes from Ahmad Jamal to Aretha Franklin (whose ‘Call Me’ was an early cover). Who We Are’s title track affirms his blissfully inclusive perspective, rejecting division for sensually indulgent slow jams, pastoral flute flourishes and aspirational words.

This is an album of burnished warmth, with Henry’s soft, yearning voice almost as important as his piano, which adds classically informed barroom blues to Judi Jackson’s smeared soul-jazz vocal on ‘Love Is Like A Movie’, and jagged, glassy right-hand stabs as she takes more abstract flight. He gives forward thrust to the strings’ smooth swoon on ‘Take Me Higher’, and darker gospel-blues colours to the glitchy ‘Synchronicity’, where Dane Zone’s post-production aids the depiction of a shifting urban scene. Instrumental guests include Binker Golding’s sour-edged, muscular sax on ‘Oh La’ and Theo Croker’s lighter dance through ‘Autumn’.

‘Mississippi Goddam’, which Nina Simone performed with righteous, racing, exasperated rage, is sorrowful and brooding in Henry’s hands. Lyrics once torn directly from the headlines now obliquely apply to the racist crimes which provoked Black Lives Matter, over claustrophobically layered production and shuffling hip-hop beats, Henry’s piano glinting in diamond-hard contrast. ‘Same Old Song’ may, though, cleave closest to his heart, as his balmy piano and vocal combine in almost meditative, homely comfort, “flowing as one”.